Four Heartbeats After the Fact
by Awkwardly Intrepid
Summary: Sometimes, our only consistency is inconsistency.


Disclaimer: All characters and settings are property and copyright of their owners.  
Fanfiction stories provided for educational purposes and personal use only.  
**©_Naruto_ is copyright Masashi Kishimoto/Hayato Date/Shueisha/Studio Pierrot/TV Tokyo/Viz Media**

* * *

An ear-splitting crack reverberated throughout the the forest as yet another one of its inhabitants splintered violently under the force of her punches, screeching loudly before finding its way to the ground. Leaves scattered from their respective branches upon impact, and the force of the fall blew back her candy colored hair.

A curse threw itself from her lips, and she straightened a little from her fighting stance, her outreached fist still stinging from the impact of the elm she just leveled. She had surfaced a decent clearing in the densest forest of Konoha, but it wasn't doing much to help her mood.

She had chosen this spot on purpose. The trees were so thick here, it was said that the first hokage had perfected his Mokuton jutsu in this very place, the result being a forest large enough to build up an entire country. A feat, she realized, that was probably the first hokage's intent in the first place.

It was but a moment before she let another chakra laced punch hit the next tree, the black leather of her gloves straining against her knuckles. She clenched her fist and pulled her arm back again. Taught like a stretched rubber band, she cut the tension and let her arm swing into the trunk immediately to her left. It was not the ideal way to spend the afternoon, but she didn't trust herself to keep her composure around people. Not today.

_Sasuke-kun._

Her teeth clench together roughly as she recalled the reason for her distress.

What was _wrong_ with her? It had been weeks since the war concluded, and, while the village was still far from settled, the relief in the air among the civilians was almost tangible. So _why_ was she so _angry_? Was it due to the fact that the victories they had sustained were almost weighted equally with their casualties? Upsetting, yes, but if she was being honest with herself, she knew that her antagonism was rooted elsewhere. Madara and Obito Uchiha had been obliterated, the dead stopped coming back to life with the cessation of Orochimaru's Edo Tensei, and Naruto had faced off with Sasuke squarely.

Her fist dug deeper into the bark at the thought.

She supposed it was inevitable- the fight that was always meant to be, but it had been strenuous. Naruto had leveled miles in his endeavor to get through to the Uchiha, and Sasuke reciprocated like the devil, vicious and ruthless and dripping with the intent to kill. It had been the fight of the age, the confrontation between the first hokage and Madara Uchiha paling in comparison. And in the end...In the end Naruto had gotten through to the raven hair boy somehow, and as Sakura all but dragged Kakashi through the flattened battlefield, they had found their teammates sprawled face up in the dirt. The boys were battered, bodies covered in bruises, open and bleeding- chests heaving with exertion, yet they were still smiling- Naruto with his shit eating grin and Sasuke with a smirk that had reminded her of the boy from her childhood.

Verdigris eyes refocused on the present as another tree knocked into another before falling back to the earth. Wasn't this what she wanted? What she had asked for- tearfully declaring it to be her life's wish to Naruto in a bout of desperation?

No, it wasn't. She had begged Naruto to bring back Sasuke. _Her _Sasuke. But as time progressed it became clear that the Uchiha that had returned to village was far from the raven haired boy from her youth.

Yet a small piece clung to the idea that her Sasuke was still in there- a piece, she realized bitterly, that had nearly earned her a one way ticket to hell on more than one occasion.

Still, Naruto had continued on with his daily routine after the war, smiling and blowing all of his money at Ichiraku's, the ever-present grin widespread on his face, and Sasuke had been released from the hokage's custody after he had been deemed harmless to the welfare of Konohagakure. As if nothing had happened. _As if nothing had happened_.

The elders of the village were promptly booted from their position shortly afterwards, and while the villagers were far from comfortable in his presence at the moment, Naruto was convinced Sasuke was slowly but surely acclimating to daily life in the village again. She had seen the Uchiha a few times since the reunion of team seven, even hosting a lunch at her flat for her former teammates that very afternoon. He certainly seemed fine; he wasn't exactly jumping at his own shadow.

So why was she so distraught? Shouldn't she be _happy _now? What, had she expected that Sasuke would come back and just run into her waiting arms like a puppy with profound promises to never leave her again? Really? What was it that was bothering her to the point of beating trees to a pulp in fits of rage?

Visualizing her chakra gathering into her palm, she exhaled and sent a straight jab into the tree, expelling her stored chakra at the point of contact and tapping into the "super strength" she inherited from her mentor.

"_Shānnarō!"_

The tree was obliterated even before impact, shattering into millions of splinters that flew in all directions, embedding themselves in the surrounding spruces.

The sound of the tree's descent grazed her ears, but she didn't really hear it. Her head was else where.

"You know, if you keep leveling the trees, you're going to have to answer to the hokage as to where his clan's deer went."

Her head snapped up, eyes wide in shock, only for the surprise to be melted off her features seconds later. There was her former sensei, perched on one of the higher branches of a tall spruce, his trademark icha-icha volume in his hand.

"Kakashi-sensei, you didn't have to mask your chakra to come see me."

His visible eye narrowed at the 'sensei.' He'd tried to get the kids to drop it years before, but save for Sasuke, who'd never used it in the first place, they'd all clung to the honorific. A trait that was not uncommon throughout the rookie nine.

"It was for dramatic effect."

Typical Kakashi answer.

"We could've used you at lunch today."

"I was on my way when I was distracted by the possibility of finding a civilian's recently lost cat."

She blew out a puff of air. Of course she wouldn't get a straight answer; that wasn't how Kakashi operated. On a normal day, she would have shrugged this off as normative. But today, everything got on her nerves. Today, everything once pushing her on step closer to the edge.

"So I noticed."

He looked up from his book and stared at Sakura levelly for a full minute, appraising her with the empty gray eye she'd become so used to, like he was looking for something

"I usually attribute this sort of moodiness to another former student of mine."

She ignored the pang she felt in her chest at the allusion to Sasuke. Letting out another sigh for what felt like the hundredth time today, she started to rake a hand through her hair, only to stop midway. Shizune always told her she would be bald before the age of 30 if she kept pulling on her hair, and at the rate she was going, Sakura was starting to believe it. Chalk it up to old habits, but even if she had shorn it off, she was still very fond of her pink locks.

"Sorry Kakashi sensei. I'm a little… On edge right now."

He slowly pulled his gaze back to his book,

"…I wonder why that could be."

Her jaw set on its accord, her teeth grinding against each other roughly. That was low.

"Is there a reason for this visit? Because, if you haven't noticed, I'm in the middle of something."

A chuckle found its way through the fabric of his mask, "I just wanted to see how my favorite student was doing, in light of recent events."

Sakura rolled her eyes at the white lie. It was a well-known fact among the rookie nine that all the senseis had picked favorites within their squads. For Kurenai, it was Hinata. For Asuma, it had been Shikamaru, Guy, Lee. And for Kakashi, it had been Sasuke from day one and they both knew it. Both Sakura and Naruto knew that this was, in part, why Kakashi felt so guilty about the fourth war. He held himself accountable for not only Obito's downfall, but Sasuke's as well.

"Naruto's worried about you, you know," he continued on his ever bored drawl.

She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised by the statement. Of course she hadn't fooled the blonde. Naruto might have been an idiot, but he was more empathetic than most and was able to pick up on others feelings at a drop of a hat. She turned her back to her sensei and started to walk away,

"I'll figure it out Kakashi-sensei."

_I've always had to before._

She was further away from him now, and he had to call out,

"Oh, and I should mention that Shizune wanted to see you. She said it was urgent or something."

She whirled "Why didn't you sa-"

But he was already gone. She let out a howl of rage, throwing a fist into a tree immediately to her right. No chakra, no extra power. Just her fist. The tree didn't fall, but her fist left a significant impression in the bark. Pain pulsated through her hand.

It would bruise later, but the external pain was something she could deal with. It was a welcomed distraction, at least, from what was going on inside.

* * *

Arriving at the Konoha General maybe ten minutes later out of breath, she breezed through the doors and continued through the back. Being on practically first name basis with the entire staff, she didn't need clearance like most everyone else; she practically lived at the hospital nowadays.

The life of a medic in a shinobi village was a difficult one. In typical civilian villages, most accidents that required medical assistance happened in the day time. There were exceptions of course, but for the most part, the nights were quiet. However, within a shinobi village, the general demographic was split between civilians and ninja. Civilians lived in the daytime, and the ninja thrived in the night. Nearly nocturnal, the shinobi used the added stealth that came with the darkness to thrive in their profession. It was for this reason that the medics and nurses had a reputation of never sleeping in Konoha, and the reason Shizune actually lived on base after she took over as the hospital representative and general head of medicinal affairs. She did take shifts, but Sakura couldn't remember the last time she saw the woman out for herself.

Sakura's lightly closed fist wrapped once, twice, three times against the door, but she didn't wait for an acknowledgement before she opened the door and regarded the woman furiously signing a mountain of paperwork from behind her desk. It brought a smile to Sakura's face. Shizune may not have been hokage or even been considered for the position when Tsunade stepped down, but she sure did resemble their mentor in more ways than one when put in a leadership position.

"Reporting."

Shizune looked up at the pinkette in surprise, almost as if she hadn't heard her come in (she hadn't).

"Oh, Sakura. Sit down." she said before returning back to her paperwork, scanning them vigorously, initialling and signing here and there as her eyes moved further and further down the page.

Sakura's head fell to the side. Sit down? Wasn't this urgent? Sure, her senpai was flustered, but that wasn't exactly unusual. At least, not _urgent._

The younger medic's hand fell lithely to one of the chair situated in front of the wooden desk, deftly pulling it back a ways to make room for her body in its cavity.

Shizune's hand stilled and she let out a massive sigh, her body seeming to sink noticeably as it emptied of air. She finally looked up at Sakura with a hesitant look on her face.

"I have an assignment for you."

Sakura's ears perked at the word. If she was hearing this from Shizune, it had to medicinally related. She warmed to the thought. It had been awhile since she had had a mission that coincided directly with her specialization.

"Hai."

Shizune's left hand slipped into her robe's sleeve only to reappear moments later with a scroll. She handed it to Sakura quickly, and continued to stare at the pinkette from across her desk.

Taking the hint, Sakura freed the scroll from its binds, pulling apart the parchment and scanning its contents.

"_**Mission type: reconnaissance" **_

_Okay, nothing out of the ordinary there…_

"_**Sasuke Uchiha."**_

The name flashed passed her vision as she read through the wall of text, and she quickly backtracked to make sure. Words flashed through her consciousness,

"_**Reconnaissance."**_

"_**Scrutinization and logged inventory of all abilities of the target in question."**_

"_**Sasuke Uchiha"**_

Sakura's head snapped up in question.

"I thought Sasuke-kun was deemed as a non-threat to Konoha!"

Shizune averted her eyes and bit her lip.

"He was."

Sakura's fist came down on the arm of her chair. Hard. The wood groaned in protest, and Shizune shot her a disapproving look at her outburst.

"Sakura…"

"Then _WHY!?"_

The older kunoichi sighed, her hand dropping to her desktop and drumming her fingers lightly on the wooden surface.

"He's not considered a threat, but when Uchiha-san turned himself in and into Konoha, he did so under the condition that his allegiance would once again be to the Fire Country unconditionally. Any and all intel on abilities or jutsus he acquired in his absence that could be potentially be beneficial to the wellbeing of the village are now forfeit to the intelligence division and the archives. It is important that we map out the physical abilities, especially since Uchiha is the second most prominent bloodline in Konoha."

Sakura's teeth came together with an audible snap. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"...And you need me because…?"

"It is believed that your prowess in analytical skills and medical ninjutsu added to your former bond to Uchiha-san that you would make you the most suited for the mission."

A dull thud reached her ears, and it was only when she looked down that she realized she had dropped the mission scroll. She went to pick it up, but her vision became hot and blurry with moisture. Covering her eyes with her hand in embarrassment, Sakura's entire frame shook as her voice cracked.

"Shizune...Don't make me do this..."

The older woman hesitated a bit, "I didn't exactly have a choice."

Sakura tore her eyes back to the scroll. It was signed with an ANBU mark, a sign of authority and high importance. There was no backing out of this one. She quickly read through the entire text in its entirety before tossing the scroll back onto the desk and falling back into the chair.

Acute emotional stress pressed against her chest, and despite the asphyxiation that came with anxiety, Sakura rubbed a fist roughly against her lash line, dragging away the moisture from her tear ducts.

"Did Kakashi know?"

"He may have had some idea, yes."

Sakura quietly cataloged a little reminder to obliterate her former sensei after she got through with her mission.

"Where is Sasuke-kun." It came out more like admission than a question.

"Psychiatric wing. West hall. 5th room."

Made sense. The psychiatric wing had the highest security in the building. Not that that meant much when dealing with someone of Sasuke's caliber.

Shizune slipped some keys across the table with a tentative smile on her lips,

"I'm sorry, Sakura."

The pinkette sniffed her tears back once more before swiftly grabbing the ward keys and hooking the band they were attached to around her upper arm.

"I swear to Kami-sama, if I don't get a raise after this…." she raked a hand through her hair again, beauty be damned, and stomped out the door.

She knew she wasn't being fair. It wasn't exactly Shizune's fault, she was just the messenger, but Sakura was too far gone for formalities. Something told her Shizune would understand anyways.

Stalking down the hospital's hallways, she purposefully ignored the other medic-nins that hustled by her, only regarding the ones brave enough to greet her with a curt nod. Reaching into to her shuriken pouch, she pulled out a hair clip before yanking back her hair and snapping it out of the way.

There was no time to think; now was not the time to act on the feelings that told her to run right back to the forest. Shoving the emotional tendencies more reminiscent of her twelve year old self in a box, she snapped several locks on it before pushing it to the deepest recesses of her being. There would be time for heartbreak and turmoil and angsty outcries later. She wasn't that girl anymore. At least, not in front of him.

Left, right, two flights of stairs, a hallway, another right. She unlocked doors as she went, bypassing security with no more than a wave of her hand.

5.

The number stared at her almost mockingly for a moment. She shouldn't hesitate, but she could feel her twelve year old self knocking softly from inside the box, heart fluttering in anticipation. He could no doubt sense her across the door.

One heart beat. Two. Three heart beats. Four.

She opened the door, stepping inside and closing it behind her quickly before turning around.

He was sitting on the edge of the examination table with a slouched posture. He looked up when she entered though, a blank expression on his face.

"Sakura."

"Sasuke-kun."

He should have known it would have been her. Logic pointed him to guess as much, but he'd clung to the ideal that maybe by some sort of mercy of fate, another med-nin would be running the tests.

_I should be so fucking lucky. _

She started flipping through the chart she had grabbed on her way in, already confirming that which she already knew. Vitals were good. History was sketchy.

_Great._

She pulled open some cabinet doors and pulled out some paper medical robes.

"Okay, I'm going to need you to strip and put this on."

He took the robes from her before tossing them on the examination table. Grabbing the hem of his shirt, he yanked the material over his head.

Sakura paused, eyes catching a glimpse of the Uchiha's sculpted abdominal flexing and contorting with movement. The Uchiha tossed his shirt to the corner, but paused when she noticed her blatantly staring.

"What?"

"Er… Nothing. It's just that patients usually wait until we leave to start changing."

_Fuck. _

His head fell for a second. Embarrassment maybe?

_Too late now. _

He's already shrugging out of his pants, letting them pool at his ankles before reuniting them with the rest of his clothes in the corner.

The twelve-year-old was in full force now, prying her way out from inside of the box, snapping locks off with sheer force and tenacity. One, two...

_Holy shit, those shoulders…_

She pulled her attention to his charts. Leave her twelve-year old self to rear her head even after almost receiving a chidori to the skull...

The sound of paper crinkling alerted her to him placing himself back on the examination table. Sure enough when she looked up, Sasuke had returned to his former sitting position.

She steeled herself and walked over to him. Pulling out a file from beneath her clipboard, she flipped it open to an open page.

"I'm going to need you to lay back for me. So basically the way this works is that I give a full scan and diagram anything I find, her little finger pointed to a human silhouette outlined on the chart. Two simple sharingan had already been penciled in with a set of notes on it off to the side. I'm going to give you as many details as possible, but you might be contacted by the intel division later to go into detail on anything I might've skimmed over."

He gave a long sigh, clearly annoyed. He'd be here for a while.

"Hn."

When he laid back, she put her chart down and pulled the robe from his shoulders. A second later and her hands glowed a faint green. She leaned over his form, any fringe that had failed to be tamed falling in front of her face, and started floating her hands through the air above his body, scanning for any abnormalities and getting a feel for his chakra flow and signature.

Every once in a while she'd pass over a particularly bad scar and ask about it.

Fight with an Akastuki member. Ornery summoning host. Remnants from his battle with Danzo; most he didn't remember. As she finished up, she ran her thumb rubbed up against the scar of the stab wound left by Madara. It was nothing but sheer curiosity that fueled her movements, but he shuddered a bit at the contact, despite having no feeling in the keloid.

"I have one similar to this..." she drifted off and her hand absent-mindedly ran to the skin above one of her hips, running her fingers over the scar through her clothing.

What was he supposed to say? "Cool?" He cleared his throat once, and she blinked, coming back to reality once again before turning to note the scar in his chart.

"For the bingo book" she explained with a wink. "Sit up for me?"

He complied without complaint, and she tried not to take notice at the corded but lean muscles of his back. Large enough to have bulk, but lean enough to retain flexibility and speed. He was the perfect makeup for a shinobi.

_Big shocker there._

She grit her teeth as her hands swept around his shoulders. Only pausing when she reached the junction at his left shoulder and neck, his skin devoid of any marring whatsoever. Her chakra flow to her hands faltered for a moment.

At the cessation of her movement, the Uchiha turned his head to regard the medic with a questioning glance, but the tips of her fingers were already running over the edge of his neck.

If she noticed the way his body stiffened, she refused to mention it as she continued to stare at the spot on where Orochimaru's cursed seal of heaven used to stain the Uchiha's skin- her eyes unfocused as memories of the mark flooded through her. She remembered how terrified she was of him then, so unlike the Sasuke she knew him to be, heartlessly tearing both of the Oto boy's arms from their respective sockets.

Shuddering a little, the movement made her focus on the present.

"Wasn't...Orochimaru's…?" she trailed off.

Sasuke turned his head back forward, averting her gaze.

"Aa."

"What happened…?"

The Uchiha was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if he was ignoring her. As she opened her mouth to press him though, he responded

"Nii-san…"

Her hand drifted over the area where the seal had been once more, this time with adequate chakra flow. She felt no remnants of foreign chakra in his system. Had the seal been completely obliterated? And was it really Itachi-san's doing? How?

"So it's gone? Forever?" her voice shook slightly.

It didn't escape his notice, and Sasuke threw a blank glance over his shoulder, assessing her demeanor for a moment before continuing to face forward once more.

"Hn."

Well, she'd be lying if she said she wasn't relieved. For years, she'd been plagued by nightmares of the mark, and the way it had made Sasuke act.

_Or was that just him?_

Clearly, the little voices in her head were working against her today. Shaking her head a bit, she continued the scan on his torso for several minutes, pausing over his heart, his shoulder again, his stomach…Lightly tapping her hand against his left forearm, she cued him to lift the extremity, and he complied without hesitation. Her hands floated over the limb without pause until she reached the bandages on his forearms he'd neglected to take off.

He jerked a little again when he felt her little fingers gently unwrap the bandages on his wrists. Her little fingers danced around his skin, brushing lightly here and there as she worked. She moved lower still, her shirt giving way to a small tantalizing view, nicely teasing at what she might be hiding underneath…

He obliterated the thought; this was not the time.

_Was there ever a time? _

The thought piqued his attention. Since the war, he'd only seen her a couple of times, once debriefing at hokage tower, and once again at a painfully awkward lunch with Naruto that afternoon.

Up close though, her body was leaner, not as soft anymore. But with underlying curves and movements that were more feminine than fledgling, as he saw her in his youth. For a moment he wondered distastefully whether she had grown up mentally too. As she had yet to throw herself at him, he'd assumed she had.

A small fragment of him was kind of hoping for it, though. Up until the very end, Sakura had been consistent in her feelings. More straight forward and pure than Naruto, her admiration (or obsession) was something he'd gotten used to. It was a consistency he'd come to count on, even in his absence, and he'd used it to his benefit when she had tried (and failed) to bring him back.

...Had he scared her off? As he mentally ticked off the number of times he hadn't thought twice about obliterating her, he supposed it wouldn't have surprised him if he had. Had he really expected that, after everything, she'd still be there waiting at the end of the day? Was that really fair?

In all honesty, he hadn't dwelled on it too much in his absence, though he hadn't dwelled on much of anything. It wasn't as though he really had _feelings _for her. It was only now, when she was in front of him and he was spent, that he even began to question exactly what it meant for her to have him back in Konoha.

As he thought, her fingers, so gently, traced the dual summoning seals tattooed on his wrists before turning to her chart and recreating them on the paper, muttering to herself.

"Two pronged, dual sealing and summoning. Four gate seal... Summoning…" she looked up. "Snakes?" she poked the tattoo the dull edge of her pencil.

His head shook to the side once.

"Hawks. Weapons."

Her eyebrows shot up. Weapons, she could understand. But most shinobi summoned from only one class of beasts, forming a partnership with a particular race. Their animal counterparts had their own hierarchy outside of the villages, for Sasuke to be able to summon both snakes and hawks, a pair that had had their contentions since the beginning of time, it must have taken an enormous amount of power and authority to even earn their respect, much less form a partnership. Was that why he'd gotten the tattoos?

"Do you have another one for snakes then?"

His head turned quickly to the left once again and back.

"No. Blood seals. But Orochimaru, he could…."

He lifted his arm, preferring a demonstration to an elongated explanation. At first Sakura was on the defensive, but there was no malicious intent in his posture. A second later, there was a bulge moving underneath of the skin of Sasukes forearm, tenting the skin before morphing into a snake, still attached to the limb. It was somewhere between white and grey, almost translucent, with golden eyes. It assessed its surroundings quietly, tongue flicking lazily back and forth from its mouth. Slithering forward a bit, it moved up Sasuke's arm, its body moving seamlessly from limb into individuality. It paused against the pulse point of Sasuke's wrist, resting at the accelerated warmth before molding back into Sasuke's skin.

He'd expected her to move, to jot down her observations on the chart, but the space was still next to him. He looked up, and she was more motionless than he anticipated, her mouth had fallen open a little, and her eyes blinked in surprise. Had he surprised her?

"Sorry."

She blinked.

"No, it's...It's...fine." Her hand pulsated green again. "Could you do it again for me?"

Her hand floated through the space above his arm, his palm facing up. At first she felt nothing, but a moment later, she felt a foreign chakra begin to gather at the elbow, elongating itself into a shape of a snake and conjoining itself with Sasuke's life force before moving to make its way through the skin seamlessly again.

_Oh, that's just __**gross.**_

But her face did not betray any emotion as she noted her findings, subsequently asking follow-up questions and jotting down in his answers in a slightly messy thin script in the margins of her papers.

An hour later, she had grazed his entire body with her chakra, poking and prodding in every which way until she felt satisfied. Sasuke accepted it in turn; he knew the necessity of pleasing the higher-ups. As she went on, the silhouette on her pages became increasingly filled with drawings to-scale and notes to match.

After she'd finished noting her nearly nonexistent findings on his lower half, her hand stilled, and she looked up at him. She appeared a little more apprehensive, now vulnerable where she had priorly been confident.

This is what she'd been most worried about, the thing she had most wanted to avoid. Forget past feelings of long lost love and clipped red strings of fate; this was a deal breaker.

Sakura had given herself up to Sasuke before. She'd taken a gamble, offered her entire life and being, and she'd paid dearly for it. She'd been here before, and if it wasn't for her other teammates, she'd have been cold and dead. But she had a job to do, and the full mission notice had been very specific in what intel had wanted her to focus on above all else.

He returned her gaze evenly. He knew what came next; he'd foreseen this the moment he gave in and returned to this place. Regardless of power dynamics, he would be asked to expose himself and his brother's legacy to her scrutiny, and he wasn't exactly jumping at the opportunity.

She spoke out first, confirming that which they'd already concluded.

"I need to see your sharingan."

Suddenly, he felt several chakra signatures spike outside. Two outside the building, two outside the door and one farther off, above. Most were unfamiliar, but the one above was well-known. Kakashi had posted himself on the roof of the building. They were making their presence known. A warning.

He snorted. _So this is how they are going to play it?_

She noticed it too, and if she hadn't anticipated it, she was grateful for the support. If Sasuke decided to turn, she was a goner, but at least he would be apprehended quickly. She clung to the small solace that came with the thought, but put down her charts; it was time to get this over with.

"Sasuke-kun..?"

He looked at her again, and this time, he didn't look away. Her body screamed at her to fidget, to move, but she didn't for once, and for that she was grateful.

He blinked, and blood instantly replaced ink, three tomoe connected by a singular ring stared back at her.

She shook her head.

"No. The others."

His jaw clenched, and he felt the chakra signatures pulse outside once more.

Slowly at first, the tomoe started to stretch and converge in the center, creating a pinwheel.

She breathed, her voice willow_y, "_Mangekyō..."

He could kill her. He could obliterate her mentality into nothingness. Put her into an eternal torture in the prison of her own mind. Destroy everything in between those green eyes.

A calloused hand touched his face and she leaned in closer, studying the irises and their patterns intently.

Swallowing audibly, he activated the eternal Mangekyō. First the left, then the right.

Her little intake of breath gave her away. A quick suction of air in shock, a little gasp that gave away her intentions.

Was it possible to trust someone this much? Had anybody seen him the way she was at that moment without meeting a terrible fate?

She should have been more scared, she realized. A fragment of her was, but it was overshadowed by something else.

They were so….pretty. The symmetrically was enticing.

For so long, his eyes had been so cold, so empty...Calculating. But now the sharingan seemed to be alive and incessant. Vibrant, like they held everything and nothing at all at the same time. Like it was dragging her in…

She was leaning in without even consciously aware of it. Her breath mingled with his, and the prolonged eye contact brought chills to both of them. And in that moment, they were on the same plane, on the same ground for once.

But he was at his limit. She was getting closer, and the intimacy of the moment coupled with her proximity made him want to crawl the walls. He settled for averting his gaze to the side, down to the table.

She jumped back with a start and a miniscule squeak.

_Cute. _

the thought appeared into his mind in response to the little sound on its own accord, but like the others, he banished it immediately.

She was still recovering though,

"Uh...I-…" She gave up on her endeavor to articulate a coherent thought and turned to her chart, flipping to a new page, drawing and jotting down notes furiously for a few minutes, shading in the darker parts of her sketches. She glanced shyly over to him, but he was still staring at the examination table like it had the secrets to the universe.

"Thank you for showing me, Sasuke-kun."

His response was weighted and quipped,

"Don't mention it."

She could have imagined it, but the lightest of pinks seemed to have dusted his cheek bones.

* * *

**Hello, and thank you for reading this far! (Did you guys make it? Was it a rough ride? That was too many pages, wasn't it?) Welcome to Four Heartbeats After the Fact, or 4HBATF for short (...short?). I realize this was more than long winded, and I hope that it didn't scare you off! Hope you enjoy, and you stick around with me for this new adventure. More Sasusaku to come~**

**Oh, and I'm always down for constructive-criticism and reviews, so shoot me one if you feel like it and I may reply (woot woot)!**

** Buh-duh-buuuh. Until next time, cuties.**

**Amy**


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